February 24, 2011

The 15 fingers + 16 toes of a Chinese boy!

Last year (2010) another report was made about an unnamed 6-year-old Chinese boy who had 16 toes and 15 fingers.

The boy had unprecented 31 digits, which included 15 fingers and 16 toes! But I am not sure that it would have been recognized as a world record because obviously in the fingers there is ‘syndactly’ involved, which implicates that not all fingers would have been counted – just like in the case of Heramb Ashok Kumthekar:

Anyway, the Chinese boy’s family did not go to apply for a Guinness World Record, rather sent him to Shengjing Hospital affiliated with China Medical University in Shenyang recently to undergo a surgery to remove the extras because he suffered from the inconvenience in the daily life and also being ridiculed from peers of the same age at his school. So appearantly the parents made a very sensible decision.

February 6, 2011

Top actor Denzel Washington probably developed his early acting skills with the help of his ‘trick pinky’. Manchurian Candidate co-star Kimberly Elise described in 2004 (quoted from People):

“He has this pinkie that goes out of joint” — Washington says he’ll soon have surgery on it — “and he’d freak you out with it. He’ll tell a child, ‘come and touch my pinkie,’ and it will collapse.”

Denzel Washington described once that he broke his pinky finger in an accident during his childhood, and never had it fixed.Many sources on the internet – including IMDB – laimed that his pinkie is in a permanent state bent at the bottom knuckle a full 45 degrees outward from his other fingers. But that is not the case: it’s just that basically the problem of concern is that his pinky only sometimes gets dislocated from it’s proximal joint – see pictures below!

Obviously, Denzel Washington liked to fool-around a lot with his ‘freaky’ pinkie – and one could imagine that his minor handicap even played a significant role in how he developed his early skills as an actor!!!

December 3, 2010

Hands….where would we be without them?

At november 26 the Wellcome Collection in Lond presented their ‘hands’-event. Tabitha Langton-Lockton was one of the participants in the event and she wrote an impressive review:

Can you imagine a society without hands? Frankly, no. For this would mean a world without Twitter, Facebook and YouTube; heavens forbid a world without art and literature, for how would we paint, write and type?

The Wellcome Collection plays host to an event, ‘Hands’, celebrating these odd looking appendages with an evening of music, magic and science. In the foyer visitors play the piano and pinball machine whilst waiting for the main event to open. Gigantic cardboard hands loom by the entrance and people animatedly express themselves with their hands as they queued for the ticketed events. Hands are everywhere.

A talk by Chris McManus takes place in the auditorium. Accompanied by a British Sign Language interpreter, McManus explains the science that differs between the left and right-handed. As a right-handed individual, I was disappointed to find out that all ‘lefties’ were not in fact evil as I had previously been led to believe. A later talk by the evolution expert Christophe Soligo explains how hands have developed and changed over time. Both talks are educational and thought-provoking.

The wonder of hands continues to be celebrated on all floors. Climbing the stairs, white-gloved men greet visitors with a shake of the hand and subtly (but unsuccessfully) try to place a sticker on their arms without them noticing.

On the first floor, areas dedicated to the event could be found whilst wandering around the current exhibitions. The Nail Bar proves popular with the ladies (although I did spy a suited man waiting patiently for his turn) whilst the prosthetics and medical tools appeal more to the gruesome individuals.

A neuroscientist asks me to place my right hand inside a black box and look at a rubber hand. He then proceeded to poke and stroke me resulting in my questioning my senses and walking away feeling distinctly confused. Had he been poking my hand or the rubbery hand?

Turning a corner I found what I was looking for – the palmistry section. After having my palms read by an amateur reader from the Collection library I plucked up the courage to ask if he could see children in my future. “I think that you might have two”. “Damn” I muttered, “I was hoping for at least three”.

The second floor becomes a surgery for the evening. Here, surgeons from Imperial College perform the art of stitching a wound, whilst showing the crowd how hands save lives. Visitors were able to try their hands at surgery and to see for themselves just how steady the hand must be to perform operations.

‘Hands’ shows the visitor just how essential they are in everyday life. The evening appealed to all ages and amused and educated its audience.

June 13, 2010

[tweetmeme source=”handresearch” only_single=false] Samuel Alexander Armas (born December 2, 1999) became known as the child – shown in a famous photograph by Michael Clancy – that grasped his surgeon’s hand from a hole in his mother’s uterus during open fetal surgery for spina bifida.

The true story behind the photo!

The famous photograph was taken during a pioneering surgical procedure performed on August 19, 1999. At a mere 21 weeks of gestational age—long before it was time to leave his mother’s womb—Samuel underwent a bold and experimental surgical procedure to close a hole at the bottom of his spinal cord, the telltale characteristic of myelomeningocele, or spina bifida.

Samuel’s parents, Julie and Alex, could have terminated Julie’s pregnancy at 15 weeks when they learned about their son’s condition, which can result in lifelong physical and mental disabilities. But the Armases do not believe in abortion. Instead, in August 1999, they drove 250 miles from their home in Villa Rica, Ga., to Nashville, Tenn., where Dr. Joseph Bruner, of Vanderbilt University, performed a surgery bordering on the fantastical. Bruner cut into Julie’s abdomen, lifted her balloonlike uterus out of her body, made an incision in the taut muscle, removed the fetus, sewed up the spinal defect and tucked him back inside. Fifteen weeks later Samuel Armas “came out screaming,” says Julie. So far the story of Samuel Armas from Villa Rica, Georgia, US.

The story of Sarah Marie Switzer!

Actually, there’s another likewise picture circling the Internet with a full arm reaching out the uterus. But this arm belongs to Sarah Marie Switzer. The Switzer baby shot was taken by photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg for LIFE magazine. During the, July 1, 1999, operation he captured the moment Dr. Bruner gently placed Sarah Marie’s hand back into the uterus. “She’s going to be beautiful,” he recalled saying. Her parents would agree when on August 22, 1999 almost two months after having the surgery Sarah Marie Switzer was born. Born nine weeks premature, doctors were amazed at the health of the baby and allowed Sarah Marie to go home with her parents in early Sept. Sarah Marie showed none of the signs of extreme spina bifida and even kicked her legs as an infant rare in most spina bifida patients.

A HOAX story?

Since then both photos have been used by opponents of abortion who asserted that that the baby reached through the womb and grabbed the doctor’s hand, thus showing signs of life at the 21st week of pregnancy.

But the truth appears to be a little different. For example, the surgeons have stated that during a spina bifida surgery both the mother and the fetus are under anesthesia and can not move. The surgerer of Samuel Armas declared:

“The baby did not reach out,” Dr Bruner said. “The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on.” He also stated, “Depending on your political point of view, this is either Samuel Armas reaching out of the uterus and touching the finger of a fellow human, or it’s me pulling his hand out of the uterus … which is what I did.”

Obiously, things are often not what they appear to be… what’s your thought???